1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and system to share access to video resources, and more particularly to methods and systems to enable daisy-chained sharing of video resources such as a broadcast stream.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Place-shifting devices and products deliver video from the point where it's received live (e.g., a TV, set-top-box, or an equivalent) or stored (e.g., a Digital Video Recorder, or an equivalent) to another location over a network (e.g., a Local Area Network (LAN), Internet, or an equivalent). Through place-shifting, the users gain access to the personal live or stored video content from a place where it is traditionally not available (outside the living room or outside the house).
The technology being used for place-shifting is predominantly peer-to-peer between the recipient of the video and the place-shifting device. The shortcoming of such an approach is that the bandwidth available for the video stream is limited by the uplink speed of the broadband connection at the place where the place-shifting device is installed. Since, in most of the cases it is a residence, the uplink speed is quite low. This uplink speed puts a practical limit on now many recipients can be connected to one place-shifting device at a time. Normally, to maintain reasonable video quality, only a single connection is feasible, where the recipient of the video stream is typically either the owner of the place-shifting device itself, or another person authorized by the owner.
With social networking becoming a big part of our life-style, especially among the younger generation, people are looking for more ways to share their experiences with their peers, especially if it can be done conveniently (e.g., on-line). Place-shifting could be one of the ways in which people could share their live TV experience, especially when it comes to televised sports. Imagine a group of sport fans spread around the world, who could tap into a live sports broadcast available to only one sports fan at the moment, by connecting to the place-shifting device installed in that sports fan's home, and watch that broadcast simultaneously on their computers over the Internet or on their cell phones, chatting, or video conferencing, or communicating in any way while watching. To enable that usage model, the place-shifting technology should be modified to allow for a one-to-many connection, where several recipients can stream from one place-shifting device simultaneously.
There can also be participants on the website that reside in different geographical areas (e.g., different cities, different states, different countries, and/or different continents), having access to different video resources possibly in different languages, that are not generally available to the participants located in other geographical areas. Examples of such video resources are live ground-based or satellite television broadcasts, television cable networks, personal video cameras or recorders, or equivalent video resources. With the advent of place-shifting video equipment that enables remote viewing of a person's own television through the Internet, it is possible to imagine that other people could also be interested in seeing what is available to be seen on another person's television, especially in other geographical locations.
There are solutions out there that enable that one-to-many connection scenario, but these solutions are very costly and hardly scalable. The solutions involve a powerful server with a very wide broadband pipe. The server would receive the stream from a place-shifting device or application and then re-broadcast it to multiple recipients. The problems with that approach include—                (1) A server has to be very powerful to manage many streams at once. As the number of users increases, more servers will need to be added to the pool to balance the load, and that increases the total access cost.        (2) There is also a cost to be paid per megabyte for the Internet traffic that carries video to the server from the place-shifting sources and out of the server to the recipients. This cost also increases with the number of users.        (3) There is also a legal concern from the content owners and operators who are very nervous about content “touching” a server somewhere in the cloud, where it can be potentially hijacked and then copied uncontrollably.        
One problem is the need to organize a system and method for making available video resources of an originator for remote access by one or more co-viewers. Another problem is how to synchronize the playback of the video stream on all co-viewers so that they all watch the same video at any given moment as if they are all looking at the same screen. Yet another problem is how to organize the access of co-viewers to the video resources of an original broadcasting source, and how this remote viewing access could be made available on a practical and economically sustainable basis on the Internet, given the costs associated with using up the Internet bandwidth and other related costs.
In view of the foregoing, what is needed is a method and system to control the remote viewing of video resources of one person by another person. Various wired and wireless audio/video applications could contribute to such methods and systems.